Mark Arbour

Thanks Gandalf! I've been doing well with the CLL...it looks like it's pretty much stable, and but for the fact that it makes me tired on occasion, I'm coping with it.

Thank you! I thought that people would read this chapter and kind of gloss over all that was buried in it, so I'm glad that you got it!

Thanks. Hugs back at you, with maybe a creepy ass-grab thrown in for fun. :-)

Thank you! I hope you enjoyed them!

Thank you so much! I appreciate your compliments. I'm doing my best to get back in the groove (on many levels in my life) so writing is a good thing because it represents normalcy in that part. And if Will still annoys you, I know I'm doing my job. :-)

Thanks. Hopefully it's even better now

I'm so glad I could help!

Why thank you

We are good at that enslavement and murder thing, us white peoples.

He can be.

Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked the chapter. It wasn't my intention to cast Jake as a villain so we'll have to see how things work out

Perfect!

August 22, 2003 Escorial Wade “It’s nice to be back here,” Matt said, as the limo pulled through the gates and drove up to this house we’d lived in for most of our time at Stanford. “It is,” I agreed, but not as sincerely. I knew that he wanted to end up in California when we were both done with school, and I’d pretty much resigned myself to that fact. It’s not that the idea didn’t appeal to me; I loved living here. It’s just that I knew that this meeting we were c

First of all, thanks for all the nice things you said in this forum. It always impresses me...how valuable e-friends can be. So I'm starting to pull my head out of my ass. I'm feeling better mentally and physically, but I still have to deal with the fatigue issue, which is a royal pain in the ass. That, and all of life's real life challenges, which tend to take up way too much time. To stimulate my writing, I'm doing something I've been wanting to do for a long time; I'm rewriting the original book (Chronicles of an Academic Predator). The story will still be the same, but I'm trying to make it read better, and to fix some of the more annoying grammar and syntax issues. This is to let you know that if you start getting notices that there are changes being made to that story, you'll know why. I've only gotten 5 chapters done so far, so it will be a while before it's done, but I'll post the updates as I go. When I'm done updating all the chapters, I'll convert it into e-book format and replace the current edition here. Anyway, that's sparked me to do some original writing, and I've made a little progress on both CAP and the Bridgemont series, but things are still going pretty slowly. Things are flowing in my mind, but not onto paper. So I appreciate your patience and support, and I will try to get back to my old productive self in the near future. In the meantime, I'm spending some time with old friends (in the form of the original Chronicles story)>

I’ve had a few requests from readers to reappear and explain my long-ass absence, so that’s what I’m going to do. I started out the summer with really ambitious intentions on all my life fronts, but that’s all been pretty shot to hell. So here’s what’s going on. First off, I’ve been dealing with a lot of family shit. You know, the fun things like sick parents, job changes (not mine, spouse’s), and that kind of stuff. I feel like I’ve been living in one of my own soap operas, but without as much money. The big thing, though, that’s hammered me is my health. I was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) back in May, and that’s seriously fucked with my head. Shit, it took me a month to just remember how to spell ‘lymphocytic.’ In a way, this is just so typical of my roller-coaster ride of a life. I get cancer, which is pretty awful, but I get one of the better kinds to get (such that that’s possible). At this stage, the CLL could stay at pretty low levels and cause me limited problems, and the plan right now is to watch it and do nothing. My doctor tells me that he’s had patients at my age and CLL levels that went 20 years and didn’t even need treatment. So that’s good news. Only the limited problems are pretty crappy. My most obvious symptom is fatigue, where I get tired out a lot easier than I should. I’ve had to learn to pace myself a bit more. But the worse problem is what this has done to my libido. It’s like I have almost completely lost my sex drive. It’s gotten to the point where I’m starting to think I’m asexual. It’s weird, because things don’t always work like they’re supposed to, and quite frankly, it’s not that big of a deal. I could tell you all that the fatigue is what’s slowing down my writing, but in reality, it’s the libido deal. It’s hard to write stories with a sexual/sensual/romantic tone when I’m not feeling those feelings at all. I’m hoping this is just something I have to work through, and that I’ll end up getting back to my old self, including writing again. I’ve had a few moments of inspiration this summer, but they don’t last long. We’ll see. The bottom line is that I have no intention of abandoning the two sagas I’ve been working on, but until things change, progress will be painfully slow.

Thanks Gary. See my response to Centex below: I think when that happens, JJ will be annoyed. :-) Every warrior needs a sidekick.

Why not? I'm curious as to why you've absolved Elizabeth of guilt.

First of all, thanks for the review! I've been really remiss in responding to them, and some people have stopped posting them...maybe there's a correlation...but not you. What I enjoy most about JJ is that he really has the world by the balls, and he sort of knows that, but things just don't work out the way he wants them to, which leaves him perpetually annoyed. He's really fun to write when I'm in a bitchy mood. :-)

August 22, 2003 San Francisco, CA Brad Marc smiled at me weakly, and that spurred my social instincts into action. I walked up and gave him a man hug. “It’s good to see you.” “It’s good to see you too,” he said, a little less sincerely. “I hear you’re my lunch date, which is a good thing, since I’m hungry,” I said cheerfully. “Then let’s get lunch,” he said. He turned to Sean and gave him a loving kiss. “I

Uggs maybe. Trucker hats...not seeing it. Stefan could handle the emo boys, but trucker hats? He'd lose his mind.

Finally got the last one sent off for editing. Hang in there!

Over? Maybe in their own way, maybe not. The question is can they maintain their connection as they're pulled in different directions?

August 21, 2003 Escorial, CA Will “I have to go to bed,” I announced to our group, even as I stifled a yawn. I was hanging out with my father, Grand, and Stef, talking about all the shit we’d already gone over at dinner. Without any more data, we were just going in circles. Going over and over stuff with no new information to change things was driving me crazy, and besides, I had school tomorrow. It was 11pm, and time for me to wind down and go to sleep. “Sleep well

Thanks Rachel! According to Will's code of ethics, if he finds out about JJ being with Buzz on his own (JJ didn't tell him), then the info is fair game. It's his line of demarcation, and it serves a double purpose, in that he thinks it will encourage JJ to be more open with him, and he gets to do something to help JJ out, even when he's really mad at him.

The key to whether the story is good is whether the heros are good enough and the villains bad enough, while still being believable. I'll keep trying to keep that balance.